Exercising the Wench

In January of 2005, The Lazy Wench started regularly going to the gym. This is not an unusual thing for The Lazy Wench, she's had gym memberships before. She waited for January to catch a sale on joining and she got a nice one. Then she signed up for a lot of personal training and a few classes on Pilates. This was something she had to think about for a while, as spending money on exercising did not feel like a budget friendly thing to do. After a bit of soul searching, she realized that having money in the bank will not improve her quality of life beyond a certain feeling of security. Her quality of life would be improved greatly by physical health and well being.

The first Personal Trainer just did not impress the Wench, so she did a small amount of trainer shopping to find one that she liked. Getting assigned a trainer with a master's degree in exercise physiology was perfect. The Lazy Wench could relax, knowing that her trainer would not ask her to do something that perhaps she shouldn't. The Lazy Wench strongly recommends trainer shopping to others. Each trainer has their own strengths and each person in the gym has their own needs. The instruction in how to use the equipment is not an exercise program. The Lazy Wench realized that she had spent a lot of time in gyms doing things that were not productive and might have even been harmful.

She also had a visit with her regular doctor after a few sessions at the gym and the doc was thrilled. He recommended calcium supplements. The Lazy Wench was already taking multivitamins and some EFA capsules that the opthamologist suggested. Later, because The Lazy Wench realized that she just was not eating enough protein, she added one of those protein shakes to her diet. She also did a bit of web based research and found which companies are known for making vitamins and supplements that actually contain what they say they do on the label. Surprise! There are a few companies out there that produce inferior quality vitamins and all of them proclaim that theirs are the best. Laboratory testing determines who is telling the truth.

To keep herself motivated, The Lazy Wench thought up a set of goals for herself. She printed them out and she and her trainer each have a copy on file. This amazed the trainer, as most folks only have one or two goals and The Lazy Wench had a list. The Lazy Wench has a background in goal setting for the pediatric disabled community and coming up with goals for her is a specific, structured activity. The Lazy Wench also had a great deal of fun shopping for workout clothing. She realized that she needed more because some of her old stuff was more worn than she had thought and as a Lazy Wench, she wasn't going to do laundry on a daily basis. The Lazy Wench is almost ashamed to admit that her gym bag is a Vera Bradley tote bag, but it is what she had around the house.

After 10 weeks of exercise, The Lazy Wench discovered that she could no longer wear her squishy running shoes for her workout. She was having trouble with her feet slipping when she was doing leg presses. Better shoes to wear were her Timberland boots. The Lazy Wench had caught a sale and owns Tims in some interesting colors. The fashion police will be after The Lazy Wench when they get a glimpse of what she wore to her 12 week measure day. To tease her trainer, she wore her pink Tims and an old pair of bright green leg warmers. The other gym patrons were thinking some serious retro thoughts when they caught sight of this outfit. The Lazy Wench had fun that day, set three new Personal Bests and measured as gaining muscle and losing fat. Yeah! For the completely masochistic, here is the back view of the wench in the retro outfitand a side view, too. While there isn't much in the pictures to indicate relative size, The Lazy Wench has a 23.5 inch waist and she is 5 feet 8 inches tall. For 12 week progress pictures, these aren't that bad. They are documenting short term goal progress.

Now that a few more months have passed, it's time for some new progress pictures. There is a complete set available on Livejournal. The Lazy Wench is pleased with the overall progress visible when she is in her gym attire. When the Lazy Wench is dressed for the street, very little of her newly acquired muscles is visible. After many months of work, the average Joe won't see any changes. This doesn't bother The Lazy Wench much. She knows that she is much stronger and healthier overall.

As part of her second set of goals, the Wench thought including 'be ready for a figure competition' would be interesting. However, 'be ready for' turned into 'enter' and in April of 2006, The Lazy Wench went on stage and found out what judges think of her efforts in the gym. She took competition seriously, and had a competition consultant help her prepare. The consultant pointed out muscles that The Lazy Wench needed to improve for a more balanced look and helped her with posing. Her regular trainer worked with the consultant, following his advice and adding his own experience in selecting the correct exercises. The first part of the preparation was to get bigger and fatter, building up more muscle. The second part of the preparation was to lose the fat and keep the muscle to be in excellent shape for the competition.

The Wench placed second out of five and was quite pleased with that result. One of The Lazy Wench's favorite poses is the one that shows serratus and abs. She had abs, she had serratus. Her other favorite is the view of her back as she worked very hard to develop glutes and other back muscles. This is about as good as she's ever going to look, as she is not interested in prepping for another competition. It was a lot of time in the gym, to the point where she didn't think she had much of a life. It was worth it, but not worth repeating.

Home

Travel

Essays

Instruction

SCA

Wheels